On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Biden, said that “even though it isn’t backed by data,” if two vaccinated people want to get together, they can, “though the risk is not zero.” He added, “My professional judgment is that when my daughter wants to come in here and she’s doubly-vaccinated, I’m going to have her over the house, and I’m going to give her a big hug that I haven’t been able to do for a year. So, I mean, you got to use some common sense.”
Fauci stated, “What we’re saying right now, even though it isn’t backed by data, it’s backed by common sense that if you have two vaccinated people, and they want to get together, be they family members, or friends that you know, are vaccinated, you can start getting, as individual people, even though the risk is not zero.”
Those statements came during an exchange with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. Fauci stated that the vaccines being administered are not the single factor responsible for the drop in cases. “I don’t think it’s the single factor,” he said. “I think it’s a combination of a number of things. We had a really very steep inflection upward. You can’t keep going up that long, because of the factors that got you there may no longer be present, namely, the holiday season and things like that. So, there’s a natural turnaround.”
“Well, I think what you’re going to start seeing really soon, we’ve had some very serious discussions, with our colleagues at the CDC, is that what happens when you get two vaccinated people?” Fauci said.
“I’m vaccinated, my wife vaccinated, my daughters vaccinated,” he continued. “Back before vaccination, if they wanted to come to visit you, they’d have to quarantine for a while, get tested, wear a mask. What we’re saying right now, even though it isn’t backed by data, it’s backed by common sense that if you have two vaccinated people, and they want to get together, be they family members, or friends that you know, are vaccinated, you can start getting, as individual people, even though the risk is not zero. The risk becomes extremely low when you have both parties vaccinated. So, we’re going to start seeing people saying, ‘Hey, the more people get vaccinated, I can have dinner with my family member that comes in.'”
Cuomo said, “I get it on a personal basis. I get it on a household-by-household [basis]. But when do you think we’ll start seeing, ‘Hey, if you’re vaccinated, you can go to this restaurant?’ There’s no capacity restrictions for vaccinated people or travel or work.”
Fauci responded, “I think you’re going to see a gradual increment of that where you could start doing things normal.”
“There’s going to be a benefit both personally, socially, and from a public health standpoint of people getting vaccinated,” he continued. “We understand that when people were getting vaccinated, were saying ‘Well, wait a minute, we’re not really quite sure about things,’ and people were naturally complaining and saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, why am I going to get vaccinated? Why can’t I do things that I really want to do personally?'”
Fauci concluded, “And you’re going to start seeing, I know I’m going to tell you myself, my professional expert — my professional judgment is that when my daughter wants to come in here and she’s doubly-vaccinated, I’m going to have her over the house, and I’m going to give her a big hug that I haven’t been able to do for a year. So, I mean, you got to use some common sense.”